Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Cool(ant) business + 7 supers down

Breaking news: FW got a hotfix. The time of AFK-farming billions is over. I don't know what made CCP change, probably finally they figured out that cutting an ISK sink to 1/4 causes inflation. Anyway, it's gone.
Coolant and Enriched Uranium are PI materials. They are used for POS fuel blocks. You can farm them yourself on via Planetary Interaction. However my experimental business wasn't that. I was buying up these in Amarr, Dodixie, Hek and Rens, and got them hauled to Jita via courier contracts. The difference between the buy orders in these systems and the sell orders in Jita is often above 10%. The volume is great, I could usually fill up a 1B package waiting for the contract.

The profit was often 40-50M/package, so it isn't a bad side-business. I just have to stop time to time when the price crashes in Jita, probably not unrelated to me sending multiple freighters there.

Variations of the same business also exist! The point's isn't the item, but the haul trade of something you don't haul trade. I mean taking 30 jumps with a freighter to get 80M isn't that great. However it's great to pay 20M to some guy who thinks it's a great idea to take the risk of gank, learn a freighter and spend the time with the jumps for that 20M.

So the business idea for today: look up large-volume items on EVE-Central or manually and get them freighted. Just because you can't or don't want to haul, you can profit on its hauling.

Also, someone could really explain me why does someone lock down his 1B in the collateral and haul my coolants for 20M instead of locking down his 1B in coolants and haul his own coolants for 80M?

The moron of the month is not the mining titan. It's this guy. Unless of course it's the biggest troll in EVE.

Another story from nullsec. We gathered up to camp LGK undock some more where -A- is locked in, while the supercapital fleet was busy destroying towers. But when they finished, we did not went home, but to the other way, to 1V-LI2, where the largest battle of the year happened. More than a hundred capitals were present and 7 supercarriers, all belonging to SOLAR fleet, along with 23 carriers died. The lost subcaps that were blapped by the Foxcats don't even worth mentioning. The picture below has brackets only on capitals:

The subcaps were shooting tackles and the enemy titans got out. The supercarriers were closing to a valley between bubbles. The Heavy Interdictor holding that bubble was neuted out and damaged to hull. Called for reps, but out of range to most logis (something wasn't right with logi placement, we were out of range for some time).

You probably laughed and mocked the the "I was there" intro. Overwrought, over-played, unreal. Well, for me at 1V-LI2 it didn't seemed unreal at all:

I don't know how many other logis were in range and how many enemy subcaps were trying to take that HIC out. Maybe he would have been saved without me or other bubbler could take his place in time. Maybe not and the supers could escape. That "maybe" worth joining fleets, coming to nullsec.
By the way TEST alliance is recruiting, go to the official forums and see which corps are looking for new members. And we are always low on logis and dictors.

After two cycles his armor was back, the bubble went back on, and the supercarriers were trapped. Later new interdictors arrived and soon they were totally covered in bubbles:

From here the battle was won and we had not much to rep, spent time capping up some battleships. Soon after the last Aeon popped we aligned out to go home:

Tuesday morning report: 175.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

Thanks to this report I can claim without doubt that when my pilot will be ready, I'll be flying a titan, maybe into battles like this. Trading means a sure way to get into the ships that shape the universe of EVE.

"Also, someone could really explain me why does someone lock down his 1B in the collateral and haul my coolants for 20M instead of locking down his 1B in coolants and haul his own coolants for 80M?"

It is quite possible, that frighter pilot carries not only your cargo, but some other people, who happen to send in the same direction, and also some more cargo he picks up and unloads enroute, and it's even possible, that he don't even move to your pick up system intentionally, but just makes his circles around the galaxy, picking up contracts on the way. This way he may have more money, then you do, if he does everything right (and he don't need to know a thing about the market, you know it for him, he just need to know most profitable directions and move between markets). There are also a possibility of entire corporation, dedicated to hauling stuff around - and in this case it's possible, that your cargo even cuts some turns via jump freighter through nearby lowsec.

When two people disagree, they can often make a mutually profitable deal. For example, if I think apples are delicious, and you think apples are disgusting, then I might be able to buy apples from you, and BOTH sides profit in their own eyes. Not all trades are a predator taking advantage of a moron or slacker; that's a cognitive bias called the zero sum fallacy.

The hauler might find it fun to optimize routes. They might feel safer dealing with the hauling risks that they know well than the trading risks that they don't know well. They might feel that the hauling risks are significantly smaller than the trading risks. People are different.

Stewie is awoxing his alliance by screwing their kill. Too many alliances and corporations measure their e-peen by their killboards, and eve-kill is quite susceptible to getting messed up when you understand how it mismeasures value. BPC usually cost about 1/1000 of the cost of a BPO, so if you want to amplify your ship's loss to mess with the corp or alliance status symbol (the killboard), you just load up on copies in a ship that will easily die.

Another awoxer with the name Suxar did a similar move to get his corporation kicked from a NBSI nullsec alliance. Goon ended up moving in the following month and kicking the alliance out, so it wasn't that effective as an awoxing maneuver.

"If he puts another package next to it, he can end up Goon food in Udaema."

And if his corporation is actually an ally of Goons? Or pays them nice cut of his profits for them to be nice and peaceful? Or even hold a bunch lowsec systems across the map for his jump freighters service? There are several freight corporations, that move stuff through hisec with such ease, as if there are no Goons in EVE, so, I think, it's a problem money can solve.